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No Biggee

Daily Prompt Snapshot Stories Open the first photo album you can find — real or virtual, your call — and stop at the first picture of yourself you see there . Tell us the story of that photo.

I’m sitting at Caffe Bella Italia in Pacific Beach in San Diego. Generally, I don’t care about my birthdays much. It’s two weeks after Christmas, so it was often forgotten completely and many of my Christmas presents growing up were both Christmas and birthday presents. I’m sure many others born around Christmas have a similar story. This birthday did matter to me somehow. I wanted a party, but at the same time, I couldn’t get it together to organize a big “do.” I’m always torn between organizing things and letting things happen. On this day, I did a little of both. I invited friends to meet me for dinner, but I let the rest of the day take care of itself.

In the morning, my neighbors showed up at my front gate. The little girls were all dressed up. So was the little boy, only one year old at that point, still in the stroller. They had a card and lollipops for me and they took me to the local drive-in in Pine Valley for ice cream. The image in my mind of them standing outside on that sunny January morning is very precious to me. I love them like family so I had the sense of having spent the morning with a young woman (their mom) and kids (them) who belonged to me but because they CHOSE to.

Later on I drove down to San Diego to pick up my friend who had set up a beautiful present in the back of his truck — a giant stuffed tiger surrounded by presents and holding a card my friend had drawn. We went to Pacific Beach where I met my step-son and his wife and another friend. Sometime in there I think my stepdaughter-in-law took this photo. That’s the story.

Thank you! It was almost this white by the time I was 35 so it had a lot time to “ripen.” But I colored it a kind of magenta auburn until I was 59. So, in the birthday photo I might look older because I’m “sporting” I the standard geriatric poodle cut but in the photo with Martin of Gfenn my hair is long.

Wow! I come from a long line of ‘early whiteners’ so the fact had been (honestly, no pun intended) hanging over my head for a while now, and the more vain members of my family fight it to no avail. It seems a bit sad.

So I don’t think you look old, I think you look happy! Keep being awesome 🙂